


walk with me to the edge

by besselfcn



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Violence, Fight Club as a Coping Mechanism, M/M, Soldier Enhancement Program, Soldier Enhancement Program Era, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-22 21:46:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14317818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besselfcn/pseuds/besselfcn
Summary: So it was Reyes’ idea, in the end. Most horrible things were. He’d knocked on Jack’s door near one in the morning, smack in the middle of when they were meant to be sleeping. Jack--who was always one or more of: hungry, angry, horny--had answered, figuring he’d get some help with something on the list.“Training Bay,” Reyes had said in his low growl. “Ten minutes. Wear your civvies. Don’t bring shit otherwise.”Not the one he’d been expecting, but he’d take it nonetheless.





	walk with me to the edge

**Author's Note:**

> First Overwatch fic! (Not first fic in general, though this is a clean account.) Hope y'all enjoy it.
> 
> Title (sort of) from You Don't Get Me High Anymore by Phantogram.

Nobody talked about it.

Sure, they talked about the ravenous hunger; how their meal allotments had all doubled, then doubled again, and still they were all nearly burning more calories than they were taking in. They talked about the aches and pains it put you through, your muscles bulging, putting strain on your bones, how sometimes when you moved you swore you felt your body eating itself inside and out. They talked, with all the enthusiasm of young twenty-somethings, about how  _ fucking horny they all were _ \--never stopped talking about it, really, the higher-ups having given up a long time ago on the order to keep relationships professional. They talked.

But they didn’t talk about the anger. 

Not the surface-level anger, the irritability, the barking orders at one another, the scuffles that broke out when people had too much pent-up energy, like children fighting on the playground. Not the constant need to run, charge, hit,  _ break _ \--not that baseless instinct. The  _ real _ anger, underneath it. The cold burning in their chests. The anger so raw and inescapable that it  _ ached _ , more than their stomachs, more than their bones. 

Jack didn’t know if he could blame the drugs, exactly. Some days he wanted to blame the whole of the SEP. The things it made you feel. The shit it put you through.

Whatever it was, though, it wasn’t going away. Not with time, not with more injections, and not with not talking about it. 

So it was Reyes’ idea, in the end. Most horrible things were. He’d knocked on Jack’s door near one in the morning, smack in the middle of when they were meant to be sleeping. Jack--who was always one or more of: hungry, angry, horny--had answered, figuring he’d get some help with  _ something _ on the list.

“Training Bay,” Reyes had said in his low growl. “Ten minutes. Wear your civvies. Don’t bring shit otherwise.”

Not the one he’d been expecting, but he’d take it nonetheless. 

The Training Bay at this hour is unlocked and empty, all equipment tucked away into the walls, nothing but the springboard flooring and high vaulted ceilings. Jack meets Reyes there in seven, with sweatpants hung around his hips and a thin cotton shirt that used to feel looser.

Reyes is pacing barefoot in the middle of the huge room, fists clenching and unclenching. He had opted out of the shirt altogether, and Jack was a little surprised that he wasn’t even wearing one of those fucking beanies he liked so much. 

“So,” Jack says as he steps in. Kicks off his shoes and leaves them to the side. “You an exhibitionist now? Not that I’m objecting, just think the cameras might capture some unflattering angles.”

“That shit they’re feeding us,” Reyes continues, unfazed, the way he always reacts to Jack’s teasing. “That thing it makes you feel. You figured out what it is yet?”

Jack slows his steady pace forwards.  _ No _ , he wants to say, but it’s a lie. He knows, somewhere. Been pushing it down without realizing; or maybe with realizing, without wanting to. 

Realizes maybe everyone else has been, too. 

“Have you?” Jack asks, and Reyes laughs. He’s the smarter of them, and he knows it. 

“No one wants to admit it,” Reyes says. “Stupid. We’re all soldiers here.”

The feeling--the feeling that is not anger but feels like anger, that wants to be anger but is too empty to be--claws at the insides of Jack’s ribs.

“What’s your point, Reyes.”

Reyes looks at him, those eyes boring holes into Jack’s.

“Say it, Morrison,” he says. 

Jack’s stomach knots. His bones ache. 

“I want to kill someone.”

Reyes closes his eyes, fucking finally. 

Jack, though--Jack is staring. Jack’s heart is hammering in his chest. The words, now out, rattle in his skull, in his mouth, sink into his skin with the truth of them. He wants to kill someone. He doesn’t want to fight, to spar, to train, to work. He doesn’t want a gun and a target 100 yards away. He wants to get his hands on someone’s throat. He wants to watch the life drain out of them. He wants to watch them fucking die. 

Reyes lets out a breath and opens his eyes again. “They’re not gonna let us,” he says. Steamrolling, as always. “Not for a while.”

“So, what?” Jack asks, spreading his arms despite the trembling in his fingers. “You invite me here so we can try to kill each other? I’m not gonna play that game, Reyes.”

“Not try,” Reyes says, and he steps forwards one step, two. Within a foot or so of Jack. “Act like it, maybe. Let some of it out.”

“Beat the shit out of each other,” Jack scoffs. “As a coping mechanism.”

“Why not?”   
  
“You’re a crazy motherfucker.”

Reyes grins. 

He hits Jack.

The punch is so hard it rattles Jack’s vision--but only briefly, only as long as he’s caught off guard, because the instincts, the drugs, the whatever-it-is kicks in and he’s in a fighting stance, throwing a punch back at Reyes without a hint of restraint. Reyes catches it, throws Jack’s weight, sends the two of them in circles around each other--and it’s off, all rules gone, a hunt now. 

“It’s survival instinct, Morrison,” Reyes pants, throws a right hook that Jack dodges and returns. Jack kicks out, too wide but fast enough; Reyes dodges but doesn’t catch him, steadies, turns on a fucking dime to face him again. “That’s what they’re pumping us full of.”

“They’re making us into weapons,” Jack spits. Left hook; dodge; body shot that connects, but not hard enough, and Reyes nearly gets a knee into Jack’s face, “Weapons that enjoy being used. Evil fucking scumbags--”

“So why’d--” a punch to Jack’s jaw, again, same side, hard enough he stumbles off balance, “--you sign up?”

One. Two. Breathe. “Why’d you?” and a blow to the chest, knock the wind out of him, dodge and weave before he can land another hit, but then a hand on his shirt, knocked to the ground--

“Does it matter?” Reyes asks, kneeling on Jack’s spine, Jack’s face pressed into the floor. 

“You asked first,” Jack says, though it comes out muffled. 

Reyes hums; grinds his knee deeper into Jack’s spine while Jack slowly inches for leverage.    


“You know, Morrison,” Reyes sighs. “I don’t think you’re really trying to kill me.”

Jack shifts his face to the side. “Didn’t think I was either,” he says. “Thought this was just foreplay.”

Reyes lifts off him; slow and calculated, backing away. Jack stands at the same pace, keeping the two of them in tandem.

“You joined ‘cause you’re naive,” Reyes says, and he takes a swing that Jack easily dodges. 

Jack steps forward, takes a punch; Reyes dodges, returns, one, two, step, step.

“‘Cause you think you can make the world a better place,” he continues, mocking, and one-two punch-punch hits a faster rhythm, both of them swinging and dodging as they pace circles around the training bay. “Cause you’re still a dumb fucking kid from Indiana who wants to work for the greater good.”

“Shut up.”

“Those years in the military somehow not teach you that there is no greater good? You somehow come out of that still such a god damn bleeding heart you think if you give enough of a shit about the world it’ll give a shit back at you?”

One. Two. Punch. Step. Step. Punch.

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Doesn’t. SEP don’t give a shit about you. People in your squadron, they don’t give a shit about you. You die tomorrow, world keeps turning. SEP falls, world keeps turning. We wipe out every god damn omnic from the planet, world keeps turning. No such thing as  _ greater _ anything, Jack.”

“Will you quit running your fucking mouth already?”

“You’re a fucking idiot, if you think it matters. Think you matter. Think you, and me, and whatever the  _ fuck _ happens between us, has ever  _ fucking _ mattered--”

“ _ Shut up! _ ” and  _ WHACK,  _ and it’s not foreplay, it’s not sparring, it’s not anything but Jack’s fist connecting with Reyes’ jaw, hard enough to break it and Jack’s fingers too, hard enough to send Reyes to the floor.

And Jack pins him, knee to his chest, fist raised above his head, and  _ whack _ , and he hits him, and  _ whack _ , and he hits him, and there’s blood, blood on Jack’s knuckles, blood pouring from Reyes’ nose, the sound of bone cracking, the sound of cartilage snapping and Reyes gasping for air as Jack hits him, and hits him, and hits him, and oh god oh fuck he wants to grab his head between his hands and crack his neck he wants to bury his thumbs in his eyes he wants his gun he wants to watch him bleed and he presses his knee into Reyes’ throat and presses and presses and sees his the light in his eyes--

And they’re calm. 

And his hands are still at his sides. 

And he’s conscious--wheezing, beaten, bloody, but conscious--but he’s still. 

And Jack remembers that he was always the smarter of the two of them.

“Fuck,” Jack says, and he stops. He rolls off onto his hands and knees, his bloodied fist against the mats, listening to the soft crackling breath of the man staring up at the ceiling beside him. “Fuck, Gabriel.”

“Stupid,” Gabe rasps, wet with the blood in his mouth. Jack can already feel his own knuckles stitching themselves together again. They gasp for air momentarily, there in the halls of the Training Bay. 

“Doesn’t make  _ you _ wanna kill, does it,” Jack says, and he sits up, catches Gabe’s eyes. Molten. “Makes you wanna die.”

There’s a wheezing noise, and it grows steadily; to a gasping, to something like a laugh. It rumbles through Gabriel’s chest, through his cracked ribs, his broken nose. 

And although it stops abruptly with a cough, with a choking sound and a mouthful of blood, the echo of it rattles through the bay, high and humorless, and mournful, even as Jack pulls him into his lap. Even as they limp to bed. Even as the sun comes up. 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments, like tips at a coffee shop, are always welcome but never required. <3


End file.
